Psychology Papers 6:Moving "Complexly Embodied" Individuals

The living cyborg: Equipment as part of the lived body in children and the physically disabled

Guilbeau, C. (Duquesne University)

​The purpose of this research project was to phenomenologically explore the necessary integration of the human body and of things, particularly equipment, within young children and the physically disabled. Such an integration is possible and at times necessary, when the physical body is incapable of achieving particular actions, movements, or behaviors that are demanded by the communal world. The communal and public world today, is designed for physically abled adults and as such, requires particular physical abilities that young children and physically disabled adults often do not possess. Consequently, the integration of things, namely equipment, into the lived body is necessary for both populations. To understand the possibility of such integration, the lived body must be recognized as encompassing more than the physical body, and equipment must be studied in its ability to gather meaning. The current project studied the relationship between various pieces of equipment including, hoyer lifts and slings, infant car seats, standing lifts, walkers, handicapped and child toilets, wheelchairs, and strollers, in relation to their functions such as locomotion, standing, toilet use, and walking which were shared by both populations. Analyzing both a child’s and a physically disabled person’s experience of adopting equipment as part of the lived body, revealed distinct differences that suggest a child integrates the equipment with hope and promise, while a physically disabled person integrates with despair. Though such a distinction between hope and despair is prevalent, in studying these populations simultaneously, I suggest that the hopeful promise lived by the child can also be experienced by the physically disabled when the integration of equipment is fully and permanently accepted. Such integration is reached when the distinction between the ‘not me’ of equipment and the ‘me’ of the physical body is eliminated. The physically disabled individual cannot merely adopt equipment as part of the lived body because of its functionality, but must instead be integrated more deeply into the individual’s identity and self. As stated by Moss (1989), one’s “body is at the same time, the mean by which [the person] [is] free and the outside limit of [one’s] freedom” (p. 81). Hence, through adopting equipment as part of one’s self, the limitations of the physical body are transcended, and one’s lived space is broadened through an opening up of possible movements and actions. This growing into one’s self, resembles that of the young child who finds hope and promise in looking to the future and towards the world they will one day inhabit as a way of being. It is therefore, by accepting equipment as part ​of one’s embodied self and a being-in-the-world, that the physically disabled can look towards the future and experience the freedom and hope of a young child.

All the right moves

Reinders, N. (Wilfrid Laurier University)

There are many benefits of dance for neurotypical individuals, but little research has focused on dance for individuals with special needs. The current study followed four children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as they participated in recreational dance. Interviews were conducted with primary caregivers, dance instructors, and volunteer helpers over four months. In addition, field notes were recorded from observations of the dance classes during this period of time. Several findings emerged, namely regarding factors in program success and outcomes for all individuals who were involved. This talk will focus on a subtheme called “all the right moves”. In this subtheme, instructors, parents, and volunteers discussed the physical benefits of moving to music and subsequent skill development for the children with ASD. More importantly, children ​enjoyed themselves in the dance class environment, which fostered their ability to learn and fully participate. Each child with ASD had been enrolled in dance for at least on year before the study began, allowing parents and instructors to comment on long term skill development in these children. The volunteer helpers did not see as many benefits, likely due to the reduced amount of time they spent with the child or their untrained eye for assessing skill development. With fewer than thirty recreational dance programs offered for the special needs population in Ontario, the implications of this research are to create more opportunities for dance. Individuals with special needs experience greater risks for sedentary behavior and social marginalization. It is necessary to provide recreational activities for individuals with special needs, particularly those with ASD, and one way to do so is through dance.

​In this paper we will describe how we engage in phenomenologically oriented, deeply attentive attunement to the bodies of the participants in our movement programs for teens and young adults identified as being on the autism spectrum. While medicalized, diagnostic discourse categorizes our participants as ‘severe’ or ‘low functioning’, we choose to work with more nuanced and contextualized notions of complex embodiment, recognizing that ‘function’ is often a feature of ‘world sensing’ and problem solving in a particular context, from a particular embodied perspective. Thus we have constructed movement programs that we can embed in mundane movement as well as more deliberately constructed activity stations; further, we have constructed these with the bodies of the participants as the leading clue and with imaginative free variations as a strategy for designing and including movement patterns and station design that do not conform to typical or traditional approaches to autism.We will base our descriptions in our recent foray into a specialized individualized movement program for three young adult males who typically require 1:1 or 2:1 support. This program took place between May and August of 2015. We plan to repeat the program again this summer so our commitment to ongoing reflective analysis on our programming and strategizing allows us to be loyal to our participants and to our research orientation, and provides us with the mechanisms for ongoing accountability. Specifically we will describe and analyze three critical incidents that will exemplify our use of the lifeworld existentials (Body, Space, Time and Relation), IFV and phenomenological attunement: The Bite, The Copy Cat, The Voyeur. Each of these incidents involves intense embodied encounters between the participants, their instructors, and the program facilitators. Our descriptions and analyses will allow us to explicate how phenomenological attunement can contribute to meaningful and relevant movement programming.

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